Study Suggests Samsung Users In U.S. See Faster Download Speeds Than Apple iPhone Users on Average

[PickUrPoison]

Umm, Canada has higher speeds and is larger.

Umm, not by land area.

Also, please note the discussion was about cost vs. speed. With almost 10 times the population of Canada, do you think maybe the system in the US might be somewhat more congested, even though the countries are nearly the same size? Do you think that might have some effect on data transfer speeds?

 

[jamezr]

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...users-on-average.2192653/page-3#post-27602269

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...users-on-average.2192653/page-3#post-27602659

 

[burgman]

Doesn't matter because Apple is now a fashion accessory, not a technology company. What's the next Apple watch mystery material? We have had gold, ceramic. How about sustainable bamboo? iPhone X Skyrocketed the price above $1000, now that's the default price. MBP with the touch bar just cost an extra $500 over-night. Can't wait for the 16" model and the price gouging.

Not to mention nearly half a decade without updating their top of the line computer, so who cares about speed? Apple sure as hell doesn't. But you sure as hell will pay through your nose for mediocre. Apple has to find profits somewhere as they hurtle towards saturation.

yet here you are spewing over a 5% speed difference, well done

 

[npmacuser5]

One factor that appears missing. Apple has a much longer retention rate for older phones. I still have a 5s that uses the networks for example. The point, a number of variables in this study that may skew the results.

 

[Shirasaki]

Even if it is faster, by the look of that graph we aren't talking major speed improvement here. Oh whoop de do a meg or two quicker. I literally don't care about the speed as long as it's fast enough to stream a video. What I really care about is the quality of the connection. How well does the phone keep its connection to the mast, how does it perform in congested areas, how well does it perform in poor coverage areas, how quickly can it regain a connection, how quickly does it realise the connection has gone bad. These are the things that really matter once we hit the point I can stream a video.

For me, those QoS factors come BEFORE I can even think about opening MacRumors forum. Without quality connection, web browsing is simply a joke, let alone streaming and doing anything else that is network intensive.

 

[CarlJ]

All I see is how crappy the US is compared to other countries. WTH.

I certainly wish we had higher speeds overall, but I suspect a substantial factor is that the USA is enormous and sparsely populated as a whole, compared to many of these other countries. Getting high speed everywhere here (rather than just in select areas) is a monumental task (it doesn't help that corporations here have so much power and so little regulation, and can pretty much do anything that serves their bottom line).

Except for a few rare visits to remote locations with poor signal, I've never felt like cellular network speed was causing me grief - CPU and storage have been limiting factors more often. Currently getting 87 Mbps on Verizon, but that's in a relatively well-served area.

 

[burgman]

I find it hilarious that the US (arguably the wealthiest country in the world), which has expensive internet and mobile plan prices is so slow.

Compared to Norway? Country the size of California with a population smaller than some suburbs of Los Angeles. Infrastructure to cover the US land mass and population is expensive. Too expensive? Fortunately we have a lot of choices vs many countries that have few.

 

[PickUrPoison]

Confused why this is even a discussion at this point. The newest iPhones all use the horrible Intel modems, so of course they aren't going to be as fast.

Yet Apple is fastest in seven countries.

Seems like it might have more to do with infrastructure than handsets.

 

[burgman]

I'm always shocked to see how ridiculously expensive mobile services are in the USA. 80 dollars per month? 90 dollars per month? WHAT?!

I pay 25 euros ($28) per month for unlimited phone calls, unlimited texts and virtually unlimited 4G data. The only 'limit' I have on my data is that I can use 5GB per day, before it stops (to prevent misuse) but I can reactivate another GB by one click on a button in my carrier's app for free. If that gigabyte runs out I can get another one by repeating that, and another one, and another one..

So basically it is unlimited 4G. And i have never used more than 5GB on one day. So for me it is absolutely perfect.

We have to spend the money we save somewhere by only paying $3.00 US per gallon of gasoline

 

[CarlJ]

Yet Apple is fastest in seven countries.

Seems like it might have more to do with infrastructure than handsets.

Indeed. The "Intel modems are horrible" story is horribly overblown - you'd think from the continual comments on this forum that Intel modems were only getting 14.4 Kpbs dialup speeds. They may not be as good as the Qualcomm modems in all situations, but the disparity is not that great.

 

[Sabelonada]

Umm, not by land area.

Also, please note the discussion was about cost vs. speed. With almost 10 times the population of Canada, do you think maybe the system in the US might be somewhat more congested, even though the countries are nearly the same size? Do you think that might have some effect on data transfer speeds?

I would think that the Canadian system has a good deal of congestion given the population is much more densely situated along the southern portion of the country.

I would imagine the speeds in the northern portion of the country aren't as high, but there's probably a lot less competition for bandwidth.

 

[IIGS User]

My 2 soup cans and a string beat your 2 dog food cans and a string.

NA NA NANA NA NA

 

[spacemnspiff]

All I see is how crappy the US is compared to other countries. WTH.

Capitalism at work.

 

[Sabelonada]

Yet Apple is fastest in seven countries.

Seems like it might have more to do with infrastructure than handsets.

It's also the slowest in seven countries.

 

[PickUrPoison]

It's also the slowest in seven countries.

Seems like it might have more to do with infrastructure than handsets

 

[CarlJ]

I'm always shocked to see how ridiculously expensive mobile services are in the USA. 80 dollars per month? 90 dollars per month? WHAT?!

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, it's information we've never heard before, especially not in, say, every other article on this site that has ever discussed cellular pricing.

All the bolding and UPPERCASE really help us get the message - otherwise we might not have noticed your important message.

Unless you, personally, have a plan that you will be putting into action soon to rectify this disparity in pricing - perhaps you can come here and set up your own low-priced wireless service - your (and other's) ranting/gloating/explaining here... isn't helpful.

 

[Sabelonada]

Seems like it might have more to do with infrastructure than handsets

Or, from the article

Apple's challenge is that few of its current models are high-tier devices when we group iPhone models based on their mobile network experience capabilities. In our measurements, just 14% of Apple users are high tier. Instead, Apple has chosen to focus its handset designs on other capabilities such as facial recognition, camera innovation, long battery life, and extremely fast application processors and graphics using Apple's in-house silicon designs.​

So it seems that even in countries with excellent infrastructure, Apple seems to be unable to capitalize on it. It's probably a relatively irrelevant metric since Apple has prioritized how the phone is used over absolute speed. That's a very Apple thing to do.

 

[mudflap]

Doesn't matter because Apple is now a fashion accessory, not a technology company. What's the next Apple watch mystery material? We have had gold, ceramic. How about sustainable bamboo? iPhone X Skyrocketed the price above $1000, now that's the default price. MBP with the touch bar just cost an extra $500 over-night. Can't wait for the 16" model and the price gouging.

Not to mention nearly half a decade without updating their top of the line computer, so who cares about speed? Apple sure as hell doesn't. But you sure as hell will pay through your nose for mediocre. Apple has to find profits somewhere as they hurtle towards saturation.

1. Apple is not a fashion accessory. If kids under 25 want to believe iPhones are hip, I'm fine with that.

2. I got my iPhone Xr for something like $650 and it's awesome.

3. The first 15" MBP with Touch Bar's initial price was $2,399 for 2.6gHz. The previous version without the Touch Bar was $2,499 for 2.5gHz. So the price of the MBP with Touch Bar did NOT increase $500 overnight.

4. If you think Apple's products are mediocre, why are you here? Don't get me wrong, I have problems with Apple and it's up to use to make a stink about it and get them to improve, but MEDIOCRE?

 

[Cosmosent]

Thanks for the article !

That level of detail is rarely widely reported ... thanks again !

 

[lederermc]

Samsung smartphone users in the United States experience faster LTE data speeds on average than Apple iPhone users, according to a recent global study conducted by Opensignal.

The study looked at over 3 billion measurements from more than 23 million devices from April 1 to June 30, 2019, concluding that Samsung users in the U.S. experienced download speeds 8.2Mb/s faster than iPhone users on average.

Samsung users also saw faster download speeds than Apple users in 35 percent of countries, across 40 countries analyzed. Apple users saw faster speeds in just 17.5 percent of countries, and in the remaining 48 percent, neither Apple nor Samsung (nor Huawei) offered the fastest devices.

Apple's iPhones had the biggest edge over Samsung in Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates, where iPhone speeds were 8Mb/s faster than Samsung device speeds. Samsung had the biggest edge over Apple in Norway, where Samsung users saw mobile speeds that were 14Mb/s faster than those experienced by Apple users.

All in all, Apple's iPhones were faster than Samsung and Huawei (the third most popular worldwide smartphone) in Brazil, Costa Rica, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and UAE.

Samsung won out in the United States, Australia, Chile, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, and Sweden.

Opensignal's testing split smartphone users into three groups (low, mid, and high-tier) based on each smartphone's mobile network capabilities, with the highest tier representing the newest smartphones with technology than Opensignal says is more sensitive to mobile network improvements.

Amid higher-tier smartphones, differences in speeds between the three largest smartphone brands (Apple, Samsung, and Huawei) were smaller. Higher-tier smartphones included the iPhone XS and XS Max, along with the Galaxy S8, S9, and S10, among others.

Higher-tier Samsung users saw faster speeds than Apple and Huawei users with global download speeds of 26.6Mb/s vs. 25.1Mb/s (Apple) vs. 24.4Mb/s (Huawei), but Apple users saw the fastest speeds of the three in the mid-tier category, which included the iPhone XR, X, and 8, along with the Samsung M40 and A80 and others.

Middle tier iPhone users, which make up the bulk of Apple users, saw speeds of 16.5Mb/s, compared to 16.3Mb/s for Huawei users and 14.4Mb/s for Samsung users. Samsung ultimately won out in the higher-tier smartphone category (aka the newest devices) and won the overall speed contest because most iPhone users have iPhones with slower modem hardware.

Samsung and Huawei have prioritized "Gigabit" LTE modems over the course of the last few years, while Apple's only devices with modems in that class are the iPhone XS and the XS Max. Even the iPhone XR, a 2018 device, doesn't have an LTE modem comparable to the modem chips Samsung has been using for the last couple of years.Apple's 2019 version of the iPhone XR is expected to feature faster LTE speeds that may eventually help Apple gain an edge over Samsung. The looming worldwide adoption of 5G will also shake things up, though Apple is not set to start debuting 5G capable devices until 2020, while Samsung already has 5G devices in 2019.

More detail from Opensignal's report can be found on the Opensignal website.

Article Link: Study Suggests Samsung Users In U.S. See Faster Download Speeds Than Apple iPhone Users on Average

20 Mbps is more than enough to stream Netflix et al, All this hype about gigabit internet on your phone is worthless unless you want to tether 5 users watching Netflix et al.

 

[falainber]

Wow. Samsung's are a whole 5% faster.

:shrug:

Your math is way off. In US, downloads on Samsung phones are 40% faster (28 vs 20). That's actually quite astonishing.

 

[nt5672]

The Qualcomm chips are faster overall in speed and connectivity. Side by side my Pixel 3XL and S10 Plus have faster download speeds than my Xs Max. It has been this way for a few years.
It only really matters if you are gaming or downloading movies or bigs files.

Everyone seems to forget that Apple has never really had any really really good RF designers. RF is more than just the chip. Why don't they have good RF people?, Because they don't need to. Apple sacrifices RF design to get that thin metal fashionably pretty design. Just like they sacrifice other qualities for a pretty design.

I can hear Cook now, "You want that antenna where? That'll cost an extra 0.01 cent. No way. Our users are too dumb to notice the difference." This situation is no different than batterygate, Apple thinks users won't be able to tell when they slow the phone down with subpar RF chips and design. Why do you think in the past they slowed the Quallcomm chips down to match the speed of the Intel chips.

All of the above is why it matters. Because if we don't complain, then Apple will continue to have even worse performance. IMO Apple would be quite happy to sell a phone that was nothing but the case for the same price as now, if they could get away with it. Our job is to make sure they don't get away with it.

 

[I7guy]

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...users-on-average.2192653/page-3#post-27602659

I guess you might have inadvertently missed the post I quoted.

 

[wigby]

Not sure how hilarious it is, but do you think it has anything to do with the relatively large area that carriers have to cover? The US is somewhat large, comparatively.

It's really all about existing infrastructure. U.S. had wired telephone and cable telecom saturation long before any other country. That old infrastructure prevents new infrastructure from being adopted across the country even though it could've been technically accomplished decades ago. Smaller countries do not experience such obstacles because of smaller scales and different rates of technology adoption.

 

[nt5672]

Indeed. The "Intel modems are horrible" story is horribly overblown - you'd think from the continual comments on this forum that Intel modems were only getting 14.4 Kpbs dialup speeds. They may not be as good as the Qualcomm modems in all situations, but the disparity is not that great.

Speed is just a catchall non-engineers seem to want to use to categorize the problems with Intel RF modems. Intels RF modem problems are more than just speed.